Monday, November 26, 2012

We follow stories through pages, tracing a winged migration route through the imagined world. Writing guides us along the flight path in a weaving course of words creating stories. Leaves of paper left to the winds of the tale... hands turning pages.

Our spoken words and thoughts have been written, printed, recorded, placed on film then miniaturized to a digital pixel of the hand print on a computer keyboard. Libraries are now world word information centers holding our collective stories and marking the trail to expanding and understanding other ways of thinking, seeing and dreaming.

We recently spent several months working on a commissioned sculptural work for a new library in the Salt Lake City area. The Viridian Library and Event Center is a beautiful new Leeds Gold rated building at the city center of West Jordan south of Salt Lake City. The art committee chose us to produce a work that could integrate the three areas of the building, create a flow between the library, the central lobby and the event center within the building complex.

The resulting design of the work came about through various means. We wanted the work to involve a simple form of flying and floating paper, letter forms and pixelated color. Within the library space were deep light wells extending up through the central lobby atrium entry as well as the main library room. The library sky lights also extended up through the second floor staff offices and further to the roof top at 50' from the library floor. What a great aerial space to work with!

The aerial sculpture traces a trail from the pictographic to the formation of letters and words, to paper, book, library and to the digital language of binary information process. We imagined the entire work to trace our evolution from the beginning of language to the present form of global information sharing. It's been a long journey.

The work itself is also long....close to five hundred feet from one end to the other. It meanders and floats through the ceiling spaces, into the skylight wells and down hallways at the facility creating discovery areas and flashing changing color patterns from the dichroic units of the 'cloud' mobiles. A cascade of letters descend from the high light wells in the library and weave among the paper and flying book forms. The paper then floats into the entry lobby, up the central skylight to a flock of gently moving mobiles. The trail of paper forms then drifts to the Event center hallway transforming into cloud-like pixel grid mobiles that float above.

After a week of installing the mobile units the staff at the library were very pleased with the results. The gentle movements and soft color changes set a quiet tone to the building and we hope will lift the spirits of the people visiting the library and event center there.

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ABOUT AIRWORKS STUDIO

The studio started from a simple joy of making kites in 1976 and has expanded to working with the themes of flight and air in sculptural works. The aerial sculptures now include the aerial acrobatics of colorful and kinetic mobiles, wind blown sail forms, delicate suspended structures, banners, arching bridge forms, wind activated works and installation sculptures.

We have been a collaborating artist team on various sculpture commissions, theater performance works and international kite exhibitions since 1996. Our combined works span a wide range of disciplines. Airworks Studio was created in 1999 to further the exploration into the realms of aerial sculpture.

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ABOUT US

G E O R G E P E T E R S

George Peters has a thirty year history of working with aerial forms from gallery works to installation sculpture, kites, mobiles, wind sculpture and banner works. He has completed over seventy national and international commissioned works for private, corporate and public institutions. He attended Art Center School of Design in Los Angeles and has worked in various art fields as a visual artist, sculptor, craftsman, fiber artist, environmental and installation sculpture, graphic arts, illustration, photography, film animation, digital imaging, architectural modeling, theater set and costume design. Since creating Airworks Studio, Inc. with artist, Melanie Walker in 1999, their joint works have won national and international public art commission awards.

M E L A N I E W A L K E R

Melanie Walker has an exhibition history that spans more than thirty years. She received a BA from San Francisco State University and an MFA from Florida State University. She is a mixed media artist and is invested in ideas. Her approach to materials includes photographic media, digital art, sculpture, installation, fiber art, printmaking, costume design and public art. She has exhibited her work both nationally and internationally and has work in a number of permanent collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson. She is presently a professor of art and teaches photography and alternative photographic processes at the University of Colorado, Boulder.